Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Narinder’s mother was called Bibi Jeet Kaur and she was in her late thirties when Narinder was born, seven years after her brother, Tejpal. It was a great blessing, relatives had said. God had listened. Everyone at Anandpur Sahib — and everyone back in England, for that matter — said Bibi Jeet Kaur was a model gursikh. She could read the gurmukhi script with fluency. When she wasn’t running the gurdwara canteen or serving langar to the congregation or in the darbar sahib performing the kirtan, she was helping youngsters understand the importance of sikhi. She’d never cut her hair but swept it all up beneath a black turban, and over that turban she wore a long, wide chunni double-wrapped across her chest. Most importantly, she was bringing up her children as gursikhs, and by the time Narinder and Tejpal were eight they knew all of the sukhmani sahib and would be called down to perform a portion of it when relatives visited from Birmingham, Leicester or, once, from Vancouver.

During her third summer at Anandpur Sahib, when Narinder was six, she stood in front of the holy book and received the cloth from which she was to cut her first turban. It was of coarse orange cotton and Narinder’s arms jerked down as the old granthi dropped the material into her hands. Bibi Jeet Kaur indicated for Narinder to touch the cloth to her forehead. The whole congregation then recited the ardaas, asking Guruji to bless this child who was going to give herself in service to Him and his alms.

At the hostel, her mother took the cloth and folded it into the suitcase. ‘We’ll get it cut in England.’

‘Can’t I wear it tomorrow?’

‘What’s the hurry? I promise He won’t mind if you wait a week.’

‘But I want to wear it tomorrow.’

In truth, she wanted to be like her mother, whom she’d never seen without her kesri. Bibi Jeet Kaur did get the cloth cut the next day and a week after that mother and daughter stepped into Heathrow’s arrivals lounge sporting matching orange turbans. Narinder’s father awaited them. Baba Tarsem Singh was a tall, strong, shoulders-back man with a long, foamy black-grey beard whose sideburns were combed up into his turban. He nodded courteously at his wife, who nodded just as courteously back, and then he gathered Narinder up into his arms.

‘My beautiful little sikhni!’

She loved her turban. Her mother taught her how to wash it and keep it starched up, how to stretch it so it retained its shape on her head for the whole day, how to tie it up, remembering to make a slim pocket at the nape of her neck so that the thick pin needed to tuck away loose hairs could be hidden away.

Narinder and Tejpal were homeschooled, and each morning, after prayers, from seven through to eleven, her father went through their lessons. Afterwards, Narinder touched her forehead to the ground, said, ‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh,’ and accompanied her mother to the gurdwara, to spend the afternoon doing seva.

She pushed up the sleeves of her tunic and helped the women sift through the vast trays of lentils and beans and rice. They seemed to find her funny. Why don’t you go outside and play? But Narinder said she’d rather help. That that was why her bibi and baba sent her here. Sometimes she performed the kirtan with her mother, and while Bibi Jeet Kaur played the harmonium, Narinder sat by her side, clapping the two tiny cymbals only when her mother gave the nod.

‘Chatur disaa keeno bal apnaa sir oopar kar dhaario. Kripaa kattaakh avalokan keeno daas kaa dookh bidaario. Har jan raakhae gur govind. Kanth laae avagun sabh maettae daeaal purakh bakhsand rehaao. Jo maageh thaakur apunae tae soee soee devai.’

‘In all four directions the Lord’s might is extended upon my head. His hand protects me. His merciful eye beholds me, his servant. My pains are dispelled. I am saved by my Lord. In his embrace, by his compassion, my sins are erased. Whatever I ask of my Lord, that and more I am blessed with.’

It was Narinder’s favourite hymn, this hymn of encouragement. Reaching the end, she’d open her young eyes and it was as if the world seemed brighter, greater.

*

One morning, at Anandpur Sahib, after Narinder had finished distributing the prasad, she asked her mother for a roti. She took the roti out to the yard behind the gurdwara and tore it into small pieces and cast these pieces around. The birds came at once. They’d got used to Narinder this last week, perhaps even come to expect her and her roti. One bird seemed to be limping and each time she — Narinder always assumed any animal in pain was female — got near a scrap of roti, another bird would snatch it away. Crouching, Narinder placed a few pieces of roti in front of the creature, but it seemed too weak to take them. It tried to flap its ragged wing. Its feathers were sparse, as if other birds had pecked at it, and it made a thin sound that Narinder took as a cry for help. Gently, she gathered the bird into her palms and held it to her chest and carried it inside to show her mother.

At the hostel, she made a little bed for it out of a box that had once contained rolls of masking tape. She lined the box with a warm tea towel and placed the bird inside it. Then she turned down the ceiling fan so it wouldn’t get cold. She shook beads of water from a cartoon cup into its beak, even waking up to do this through the night. And all day Narinder softened roti in the same cup of water and fed the bird a few morsels, which seemed all it wanted to take. It didn’t seem to be recovering. Its skin appeared to be turning yellow and its eyes were dulled.

‘Bibi?’ Narinder said.

‘Did you pray?’ Bibi Jeet Kaur asked.

Narinder nodded.

‘Then it’s in His hands now.’

The bird died on the fourth day and Narinder wouldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t the death so much, more the suffering that preceded it, that seemed so unfair.

Her mother promised her a bird table when they got back to England, and so one weekend in September Baba Tarsem Singh drove them to a garden centre thirty minutes away and Narinder chose a mahogany feeder topped with a small square house. She and her father started putting it up straight away. Bibi Jeet Kaur said she was going to lie down for a bit, that her back had been hurting all week. They finished erecting the bird table and Narinder said a waheguru and headed inside. She met her mother on the stairs.

‘Fetch your baba, beiti,’ Bibi Jeet Kaur said. She had a hand to her lower back. She looked to be in agony.

It was a blood clot, and in the drive to the hospital it travelled up her spine, causing a blockage which stopped oxygen to her brain. The funeral was very well attended. No one had ever seen a better one, people said. Baba Tarsem Singh stood up and pulled round the curtain and pressed the button which activated the belt and carried his wife into the furnace. Narinder was sitting with her dadiji near the back of the room. She was nine years old and it was the first time she’d had to wear a white turban.

There was hardly any furniture in the room and what little there was looked as if it had been set there for a long time. The single bed coming out from the chimney breast, the plain wood dressing table at its side and the straight chair tucked neatly underneath. There was no wardrobe — the bed contained two drawers for her clothes. The evening light was the colour of dark amber and came through the window in two wide beams. The beams ran in parallel, along the brown carpet, over the bed, and then along the floor again, stopping just short of Narinder standing in the doorway with her suitcase. She closed the door and went down the dark staircase and into the hall. Her father was in his room, rocking on his chair, praying quietly to himself. He was so engrossed he didn’t seem to hear Narinder set down her case and enter.